I am still waiting for a full report, John. So far I have been told that the Administration side listened and will take the points forward to the meeting of the Council of Almoners on 17th March. Keith Bowen who led the petitioners' group was very busy today and only gave that brief report yesterday. When I hear more, I'll report back here.

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!

A good deal of "paperwork" is being diligently assembled by the March 10 deadline for agenda documents for Council on March 17. This takes priority for Keith over the Report of the MT meeting understandably. However this indicates a diligent listening and hopefully heeding by senior CH management of the thousand voices raised by this Campaign 1552 initiated by BCOB in December. We are very hopeful that there will be a stepped progress starting on March 17 and continuing thereafter to ensure that the CH ethos is strengthened in the ancient context of educating the poor and needy. There is a plan to create a www.CHCampaign1552.org website for ongoing work and thoughts of readers in this regard would be very welcome. Where does Campaign 1552 go from here?

I have been sent the presentations given at The Middle Temple and will email them to anyone who emails me - I don't think I can send attachments as pm. Please do send for them, they are very interesting reading. They should give all OBs food for thought.

I also have lists of all who signed the online petition, and the comments they gave, if any, as well as all who signed the original petition. Later today I hope to have analysed the data to show the decade each OB signatory left the school.

Please email me saying which documents you would like.

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!

Katharine has kindly offered to email these very enlightening documents to all those interested but I wonder if the forum moderator could find a way to make these documents widely accessible to the forum readers?

We have data from 554 of the signatories, both of the online petition and the original one, it shows a great spread of ages, the earliest school leaving date I saw was 1945, I think there were two that left that year. Some current pupils signed too. The category "none of the above" includes some former staff, including Richard Poulton former Head Master, some donation governors, and others who are almost certainly OBs from their comments but did not actually state that they were.

Old Blues left in 40s 15 2.7%
Old Blues left in 50s 50 9.0%
Old Blues left in 60s 35 6.3%
Old Blues left in 70s 31 5.6%
Old Blues left in 80s 27 4.9%
Old Blues left in 90s 43 7.8%
Old Blues left in 00s 94 17.3%
Old Blues left in 10s 104 18.8%
Current Blues 12 2.2%
OBs date not given 45 8.1%
Family of Old Blues 27 4.9%
None of the above 69 12.5%

Thanks to Julian for the visualisation of the data

I hope you will agree that this shows a widespread agreement with Petition 1552

Last edited by Katharine on Thu Mar 10, 2016 8:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!

As Kit had already emailed me about signing the petition, I was able to respond to him and have sent him the data I requested. I would prefer it if you used the forum email button to email me so I can just click on reply to send you the documents.

Thank you

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!

First, many thanks to Katherine for such diligent and very valuable work. Greatly appreciated!
The graph (above) showing the breakdown by years at CH is particularly interesting. One of the charges made against the Petitioners is that we are a load of old fuddyduddies, harking back to the school as it used to be in our (distant) youths. BUT, what that graph shows, quite conclusively, is that no less than 198 of the signatories left in or after 2000. In other words the preponderance of concern is among the YOUNGER Old Blues.
I rest my case,
David
PS I am a little surprised by the fact that only 6 signatories are shown as based in Canada. I got the impression from the quantity of e-mails that there were rather more.

Last edited by Foureyes on Thu Mar 10, 2016 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

Worth noting that the map is only where we have the location, without trying to correct any typos etc in the data, and also only from the online petition information which was also used to produce the graph....

Julian Taylor-Gadd
Leigh Hunt 1985-1992
Founder of The Unofficial CH Forumhttp://www.grovegeeks.co.uk - IT Support and website design for home, small businesses and charities.

As Julian notes, his data on location, is only from the online petition.

As well as that, there is the original petition document, which currently has 119 signatories. Some people signed both, including both David Taplin, Chairman Petition 1552, and Keith Bowen, leader of the delegation and our own JR. I did try to remove all double signatories, I don't think any crept through!

While I have a list of those who signed the original petition, I do not have any details of their whereabouts.

The data on dates of leaving school, does include the 119 as well as the online petition, where they gave it.

Yes, it does take a while to get your head around it all!

Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!

Dear Julian, Many thanks for your excellent graphics which should be amongst the documents for the thirteen Almoners on St Patrick's Day. I believe that a major breakthrough looms for Petition 1552. This has been to date an extraordinary process. Fraternally David